Recent Royal College of Art (RCA) design graduate David Hedberg's Smile TV is more than a loving homage to the good old 'campfire inside the living room.' Made from an open frame CRT monitor and equipped with a computer vision system, the unsuspecting television set turns the medium's engagement pattern on its head: instead of making you smile at on-screen silliness, you have to "smile to watch." Only when you do - and for as long as you do - will Smile TV reveal its otherwise scrambled broadcast. "This project grew out from experimenting with facial recognition and image manipulation," Hedberg explains over email.

Marketing has always been about playing the heartstrings, but don't think Apple's new patent on mood-sensing technology is going to revolutionize the field, says mood-tracking technology researcher Whitney Erin Boesel